“No,” Hannah answered immediately. “No one is taking you anywhere.”
Ethan hesitated before asking the question that hurt the most.
“Does he love us?”
Hannah closed her eyes for a moment.
“Loving someone isn’t showing up years later and making demands.”
“It’s protecting them.”
“Listening to them.”
“Staying.”
“If he wants to know you, he’ll have to prove it.”
Within minutes after the children fell asleep, Hannah called her attorney, Julia Morgan.
For five years she had carefully preserved everything:
Medical records.
Ultrasound images.
Emails.
Hospital documents.
And proof that she had refused a $2.5 million divorce settlement offered by the Carter family after the divorce.
The next morning Julia formally notified Sebastian’s legal team.
There would be:
no surprise visits,
no appearances at the children’s school,
no DNA testing without psychological supervision.
Sebastian agreed immediately.
At the children’s counseling clinic, he arrived alone.
No Olivia.
